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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines
are automated milling devices that are designed to make industrial components
without the need for direct human assistance. Using coded instructions that are
sent to an internal computer, these machines enable factories to manufacture
parts accurately and quickly.

The
history of CNC machining

Computerised Numerical Control or CNC as it
is now known, first came about after World War II as a result of the US Air
Force’s desire to produce more accurate and complex parts.The modern machine’s advent can be traced
back to the invention of the numerical controlled machine made by John T.
Parsons.

First
concept developed for the manufacture of helicopter blades

Alongside Frank L. Stulen, John T. Parsons
first utilised computer methods to overcome machining setbacks, especially the
accurate interpolation of the curves found in helicopter blades. In the process
of developing smoother rotors, Parsons and Stuler generated an early version of
a Numerical Control (NC) machine.

Developed
with assistance of MIT

To further develop this machine, in 1949,
Parsons turned to Gordon S. Brown’s Servomechanism Laboratory at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT, a feedback system designed
to gauge how far the controls had turned was developed.

While the US Air Force halted its funding
in 1953 due to expense, the project was resumed by Giddings and Lewis Machine
Tool Co. who reduced expense but improved quality and efficiency.

Reduced
production time from 8 hours down to 15 minutes

The first CNC machine was developed when
John Runyon managed to produce punch tapes under computer control. By doing
this, he managed to reduce the normal production time of 8 hours down to 15
minutes. By 1956, the US Air Force had accepted the proposal to produce a
generalised programming language for NC.

The invention of CNC machines paved the way
for automated tools that enabled efficient production for manufacturers.
Today’s CNC machines bear little difference with the original machines in terms
of concept. Both produce outputs in three dimensional directions: X and Y axes
and depth.

CNC milling machines – Using a rotating
cylindrical cutting tool, CNC Milling utilises a machining process similar to both drilling and cutting.
The cutter in a milling machine has the ability to move along multiple axes and
can create a variety of shapes, slots and holes

CNC routers - CNC routers are similar to
handheld routers but the tool paths are instead controlled via computer
numerical control. CNC routers can be used for cutting various hard materials
including wood, composites, aluminium, steel, plastics and foams.

Java is very popular from the past many years, and now in 2014 it’s
still the most popular programming language. You can use Java in creating web
applications, desktop programs, and mobile applications, remember ”WORA”?
Demands for experienced Java programmers are very high and pays awesome salary.
And if you’re a novice programmer, you might better try to learn Java.

JavaScript is not related to Java even though it does have “Java” in
its name. It is most commonly used as part of web browsers, whose
implementations allow client-side scripts to interact with the user,
control the browser, communicate asynchronously, and alter
the document content that is displayed. It is also being used in
server-side programming, game development and the creation of desktop and
mobile applications. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and jQuery are 2 of
the most popular JavaScript techniques and JavaScript library used today by
many most visited websites.

With its current latest stable release (5.5.9), PHP is still one of
the most popular server-side scripting languages today. Rasmus Lerdorf
developed its first version in 1995. Originally known as Personal Home Page, it now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, which is a recursive backronym. PHP is
now installed on more than 244 million websites and 2.1
million web servers.

Designed with an emphasis on readability and compact syntax, Python is
a dynamic, highly flexible language commonly used for both scripting and
developing applications.

Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability, and its syntax
allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code than
would be possible in languages such as C. The language provides
constructs intended to enable clear programs on both a small and large scale.

C++ is a general purpose programming language that is free-form and compiled.
It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises both high-level and low-level language
features. It provides imperative, object-oriented and generic programming
features.

C++ is
implemented on a wide variety of hardware and operating system platforms. As an
efficient performance driven programming language it is used in systems
software, application software, device drivers, embedded software,
high-performance server and client applications, and entertainment software
such as video games. Various entities provide both open source and proprietary C++ compiler software,
including theFSF, LLVM, Microsoft and Intel. C++ has
influenced many other programming languages, for example, C#and Java.

Originally developed by Microsoft for the .NET initiative, C# is a
modern, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language used to develop
software components for deployment in distributed environments.

C# is intended to be a simple,
modern, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language.Anders
Hejlsberg leads the development team for C#. Its most recent version is C# 5.0, which was released on August 15, 2012.

Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming
language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming
language. It is the main programming language used by Apple for the OS
X and iOS operating systems and their respective APIs, Cocoa and Cocoa
Touch.

Originally developed in the early 1980s, it was selected as the main
language used by NeXT for its NeXTSTEP operating system, from
which OS X and iOS are derived. Generic Objective-C programs
that do not use the Cocoa or Cocoa Touch libraries, or using
parts that may be ported or implemented for other systems can also be compiled
for any system supported by GCC or Clang.

Objective-C source code program files usually have .m filename
extensions, while Objective-C header files have .h extensions, the
same as for C header files.

Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, object-oriented, general-purpose
programming language. It was designed and developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro
"Matz" Matsumoto in Japan. Its latest version is Ruby 2.1.1,
which was released on its 24th anniversary last February 24.

According to its authors, Ruby was influenced by Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada,
and Lisp. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including functional, object-oriented,
and imperative. It also has a dynamic type system and automatic memory
management.

The predecessor of the other popular programming languages (C++, C#,
Java, Objective-C), C programming language nowadays is still used by many
developers, and C compilers are available for the majority of availablecomputer architecturesandoperating
systems. Dennis Ritchie initially developed C between 1969 and 1973 at
AT&T Bell Labs.

Perlis a family ofhigh-level,general-purpose,interpreted,dynamic programming languages. The
languages in this family include Perl 5 andPerl
6.

Though Perl is not
officially an acronym,there
are variousbackronymsin use, such as:PracticalExtractionand Reporting Language.Perl was originally developed byLarry Wallin 1987 as a general-purposeUnixscripting
language to make report processing easier.Since
then, it has undergone many changes and revisions. The latest major stable
revision of Perl 5 is 5.18, released in May 2013.Perl 6, which began as a redesign of
Perl 5 in 2000, eventually evolved into a separate language. Both languages
continue to be developed independently by different development teams and
liberally borrow ideas from one another.

The Perl languages borrow
features from other programming languages includingC,shell
scripting(sh),AWK, andsed.They provide powerful text processing facilities without the arbitrary
data-length limits of many contemporaryUnix
command line tools,facilitating easy manipulation oftext files. Perl 5 gained widespread
popularity in the late 1990s as a CGI scriptinglanguage, in part due to itsparsingabilities.